


Achilles, jump now

by wajjs



Series: Time after Time [7]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Space, Damian Wayne is the Demon's Head, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Extended Scene, Future Fic, Gen, Immortality, Prompt Fic, immortal!jason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29739255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs
Summary: At the end of the day, to love is to engage in danger, to live is to accept the pain that comes with surviving everyone and everything.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Damian Wayne
Series: Time after Time [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1485956
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Achilles, jump now

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt: “Engage with the pain as a motive”— Achilles Come Down hurt/comfort with Jason || original post [here](https://wajjs.tumblr.com/post/644296881141399552/this-feels-super-obvious-so-if-someones-asked)
> 
> This is a continuation of the ending of [**a little time with you is all that i get**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292313?view_adult=true), which, in turn, is set within a bigger universe in my immortal!Jason series. It'd be ideal to read the fics before 'a little time', but you can just read that one to get an idea of what's going on here - considering this drabble is me expanding the final scene.

**Achilles, jump now**

Again and again.

And again.

And again.

A desperate scream hidden in the many times he’s come and gone and come back once more. A midsky dance with demise in all of their many forms, a drink to the bottom of the bottle, a cry in silent eyes that look on and on as the world falls apart, sinking to its knees under the weight of the things not done. Here of all places, in a cot with dripping green waters tainting memories and blood in equal parts.

Here, in the middle of things and in yet another knot in the thread of his existence, here here here here, here he stands and has to come to terms to the fact that all this time he’s been led to believe he was in solitude when an equal hid in the shadows.

No.

Not an equal.

Family.

His smile is a grimace when this is the normalcy of times past: to do shitty things with the best of intentions. To push aside the harms and hurt achieved because the nature behind the harming is of good wishes and never ill-desired. At the end of the day, to love is to engage in danger, to live is to accept the pain that comes with surviving everyone and everything.

The light of the stars is so cold when it reaches them through the molasses of space and time, when they seem to shine for them but get closer to the stars and it’s clear that they’ve been dead for so long, it’s almost like they were never born at all. Jason can relate to such dichotomy, he can identify with that. For here he is, breathing against all odds, living past the holes in the brain and the knives dug out of his spine. He appears alive before Damian, the ultimate secret, when inside he’s rotting.

He’s been rotting all this time.

_ You’ve led me to believe you were dead, _ Jason wants to accuse him, hold him accountable of all this suffering, of all the things that could’ve gone differently if only they had tried.

_ You’ve led me to believe you were gone and with you were gone all my opportunities, _

_ because I gave up and you know that I did. You saw that I gave up on everything—  _

_ I cared so much it left me numb, till I was left with no option but to act like I didn’t care at all. _

_ You left me. _

_ You left me. _

_ You left me alone. _

But Jason says none of this. He looks at Damian and ignores the water falling down his cheeks, ignores the tenderness of cut up insides and torn nerves. Instead of fists, his hands form a cradle for Damian’s face, fingertips reverential upon skin with a warmth he thought strange to everything except the brightest last heir currently in a spaceship who knows where.

God.

“I need to go back,” his voice is rough, an ache that goes beyond the planes of soul and existence. “He thinks I’ve died, for good this time. But I’m not gone. And he needs someone to believe in—someone who believes in him, as well.”

Damian tilts into his touch. Almighty as he looks, commander and majestic head of the demon himself, like this it’s much too easy to extrapolate, to go back to golden times of old, when there was a manor and there was life and expectancy all around them for a future. Future that they both know was nothing but a lie.

“You could stay here,” Damian says, eyes flaming embers, “we can find another way.”

Jason cannot laugh. His laughter died within his chest the second he opened his eyes to this reality.

“But there’s not another way for the last of the Robins. You know this.”

The sorrow, the pain. The abandonment, the regrets. The bitterness and the sweetness coating every breath. The moment before the big jump into blinding nothingness.

“Then I’m going with you.”


End file.
